


Caring Tan

by Anonymous



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Friendship (Human Experience) - Freeform, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:01:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23538796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: It's a good day in Resembool.
Relationships: Edward Elric & Winry Rockbell
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11
Collections: Anonymous, Robot Rainbow 2020





	Caring Tan

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Big_bunbun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Big_bunbun/gifts).



It's a good day in Resembool, a spring day. They had the last frost a few weeks ago, which means Ed's not staying up all night groaning about his ports- an outcome Winry had heard about, before this, but never seen personally. Most of Granny's patients only come in for fittings; Winry watches Granny work, does the adjustments she's allowed to help on, and sends them packing with an explanatory pamphlet.

Ed's different, and not just for the normal reasons, like "bones that haven't fused yet so you have to account for asymmetric skeletal development," or "ten pounds of infuriated determination in a five-pound sack." Ed isn't even different for the difficulty of adapting automail ports to freaky supernatural amputation stubs. Ed is the first patient Winry's been allowed to work with so closely, so constantly- every day, through the highs and the lows, he's _always there._

Winry thinks sometimes about how you might explain Ed's symptoms with the phrases she reads in Granny's trade magazines, alloys and neural uplinks and phantom limbs. She thinks, _Patient refused lightweight model with the reasoning of "if it can't even kick shit harder than my bone leg then I might as well not have it."_ She thinks, _neurological integration set back by traumatic association with last use of the arm._ She thinks, _physical therapy proceeding well with extrinsic motivation of employment, but I don't know how long he can keep going chasing that dream._

But Ed, as ever, won't stay tied to definitions; won't stay, period. For all the aches and the setbacks and the simmering anger- at himself, but also at something Winry can't even begin to understand- that isn't the only thing Ed is.

He has good days, like anyone else, and this is one of them.

The leg he's got on as he tries to play catch with Den isn't the final version. It's in his port, but not connected to his nerves; he's been in a wheelchair for half a year, grown on top of that, and needs to relearn how to balance on two feet before they introduce full automail to the equation. (Granny maybe needs a while to figure out how the hell they can plan for _incessant adjustments to a fine-tuned combat-ready custom piece on a goddamn twelve-year-old, we'll turn our backs and he'll have grown four inches,_ but Ed doesn't have to know that.)

He's not running, exactly; he's still learning where to put his weight. Between the two of them, Den is doing the vast majority of the playing. But he's moving. He's smiling. He can walk, because of Winry- because of the research and rehab, because she helped with his surgery. And as Granny would put it, that's why they do this. 

Ed and Al might be leaving soon, Winry might be staying here, but it's because of her that they can keep moving forward.


End file.
